I'm Loki Yan, an SEO and GEO consultant and advocate based in Melbourne. I was born in Shanghai, China, and I speak Mandarin and English. I publish original work, studies, and research on SEO, AI search, multilingual SEO, and the structural shifts reshaping how brands stay visible online.
Google announced a sweeping set of Search updates at Google I/O 2026 on May 19, including what the company calls the biggest redesign of its Search box in over 25 years, a tighter integration between AI Overviews and AI Mode, and a new default model for AI Mode globally: Gemini 3.5 Flash.
Last year I spoke at Google Search Central Deep Dive APAC on a JavaScript SEO disaster. A year on, the thing I'm most certain of is this: in the AI era, technical visibility matters more than ever, not less.
On day one of SEO, you're taught DA and backlinks. But after competing head-on with Tier 1 sites, the logic stops holding up mathematically. What really pulls rankings apart is Topical Authority, Brand Mention, Originality — and critical thinking.
Non-English brands underperform in AI recommendation not because their work is weaker, but because training data makes the rules asymmetrical. AI didn't dissolve the filter bubble — it amplified the old asymmetries through a new mechanism.